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Tuesday newspaper round-up: Sainsbury's, defence spending, BP

J Sainsbury is facing fresh scrutiny of its £12 billion merger with Asda after more than 100 MPs signed a letter criticising changes to the company’s staff pay that threaten to leave some workers more than £3,000 a year worse off. As many as 13,000 Sainsbury’s employees could take a hit to their pay packets, according to critics of the company’s plans, as it consults on a new deal meant to equalise pay among its 130,000-strong workforce. - The Times

Britain’s nuclear submarine programme faces a potential £6bn funding gap over the next 10 years, with serious questions over whether the project can be delivered on time. A hard-hitting assessment by spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) of the Defence Nuclear Enterprise (DNS) - which covers all the Navy’s submarines, their weapons, powerplants, as well as support and design work - highlights a series of risks to the programme.- Telegraph

MPs have attacked one of the City's most prestigious law firms for being "entwined in the corruption of the Kremlin" after advising on a deal involving a Russian company with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Linklaters, which is in the UK's elite club of five so-called magic circle law firms, was named in a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee on Monday for its involvement in the London float of energy group En+ last year. - Telegraph

Boris Johnson has hinted that the UK could seek to take tougher action against Russian oligarchs in the wake of the poisoning of the former spy Sergei Skripal, saying he is looking closely at the approach taken by the Trump administration. Asked about the news of an apparent delay in processing Roman Abramovich’s visa, which kept the Chelsea football club owner away from Saturday’s FA Cup final, the foreign secretary said it would be “totally wrong” for him to comment on individual cases. - Guardian

BP's outgoing chairman has warned against further tinkering with pay packages for senior executives if it is to attract top talent. In a parting shot at BP’s annual general meeting Carl-Henric Svanberg appeared to criticise the committee’s decision to cut the pay packet of BP boss Bob Dudley by $3.4m. - Telegraph

The company behind the first fracking attempt in Britain since 2011 is hoping for a rather smoother ride this time, after applying for a court injunction to deter protesters from disrupting its work in Lancashire. Cuadrilla, a private equity-backed shale gas explorer, said yesterday that it also had applied to the government for final sign-off to frack the first of two wells at its Preston New Road site. - The Times

Business leaders around the globe have said the rise of economic nationalism triggered by Brexit, Donald Trump and populist politics poses the greatest threat to their growth. According to a survey of 1,300 chief executives from some of the world’s biggest companies, carried out by the accountancy company KPMG, British business leaders are notably more pessimistic than their peers. - Guardian

Aston Martin has taken a hit from sterling's fluctuating value caused by uncertainty over Brexit, with headline profits at the luxury car maker halving in the first quarter. Pre-tax profit dropped almost 50pc compared to the last time round on a statutory basis to £2.8m as sterling’s weakness hit the Gaydon-based business. Stripping out currency movements, pre-tax profit was up almost 50pc at £7.4m. - Telegraph

Investors appeared to prefer the word of Elon Musk over media critics yesterday as the two sides both lauded and lambasted the Tesla Model 3 electric car. Mr Musk, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Tesla, said that a new $78,000 dual-motor, all-wheel-drive version of the Model 3 would “beat anything in its class on the track”. - The Times

The world’s largest battery and vehicle-charging network could roll out across British roads through a new £1.6bn scheme due to start in Southampton next year. Pivot Power, a new energy start-up, has won the backing of a UK institutional investor, green energy multi-millionaire and National Grid for fresh plans to dot the UK with grid-scale 50MW batteries and rapid vehicle charging docks across 45 sites. - Telegraph

Sony has announced a US$1.9bn (£1.4bn) deal to acquire EMI Music Publishing, one of the world’s largest music publishing companies with rights to songs by the likes of Queen and Pharrell Williams. The deal adds a catalogue of more than two million songs – including some of the greatest hits from the first half of the 20th century – to Sony’s already huge holdings. - Guardian

Google has imagined a future where it uses enormous quantities of data it collects on individuals to manipulate their behaviour and achieve “desired results” for the whole species. In a leaked video from the company’s secretive X research division, the narrator cites Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene and depicts Google’s data as a “selfish ledger” which treats users as “transient carriers” or “survival mechanisms” for valuable data. - The Times